


Sacrifice of A Friend

by Begolaman



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: After Oliver's death, Barry Allen & Oliver Queen Friendship, Barry Allen Needs a Hug, Barry Allen is The Flash, Crisis on Infinite Earths Crossover Event (CW DC TV Universe), F/M, Iris West Loves Barry Allen, Kara Danvers is a great friend, Married Barry Allen/Iris West, Post-Crisis On Earth-X Crossover Event (CW DC TV Universe)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:08:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29737800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Begolaman/pseuds/Begolaman
Summary: Filler for Crisis on Infinite Earths - Iris finds Barry right after Oliver's death.
Relationships: Barry Allen/Iris West
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	1. It Should Have Been Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ifeellikeiamamidget](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifeellikeiamamidget/gifts).



> Hi! I feel like Barry's grief of Oliver was not really shown in the show, which is definitely fair, but I just wanted to add this little filler of Iris finding Barry after Oliver's passing. My baby has been through so much :(  
> Enjoy!
> 
> And to the talented ifeellikeiamamidget, im a big fan of you girl, so the fact that you loved my fic means a lot, hope you enjoy!!! :)

They took him away from her.

They always do. The speed force, the future, other big bads, the world. They always take him away with no promise to keep him alive. She never knows how it will end and the unknown makes her shiver. But of she knew what she know now back then, she would know that not knowing is much much better. Because she never has to say goodbye beforehand.

She never has to carry the burden of knowing he will die.

"Guys, the monitor is here."

Barry's voice is steady and calm through the monitors. But still, it makes every person in the room tremble with fear. Everything that they were getting ready for, everything that they were trying to stop is here. Her husbands death is here. Cisco's best friends death is here too, same as Caitlin/Frost's only reason to keep living after her darkest times' death. Joe's son's death is here, and Wally's brother's death. Central City's hero's death is here, same as Iris West's whole world's death.

He goes. They don't know what to do. Normally, when they hear the electricity sound from the monitors, they get to work. They save the say. Like they always do. But now, none of them want to do that. Because saving the world means not saving Barry Allen, and they would all make the choice to save him instead in a heartbeat. 

But he wants to die.  _ He needs to die _ she fixes herself. Her husband would never leave her if he wasn't desperate. They still haven't talked about why Barry actually let Ramsey infect him, because she already knew the reason. 

_ "I was afraid that if you would have told me to stay, I wouldn't be strong enough to leave." _ He said to her once, after he came out of the speed force. So she didn't ask him about it, even seeing how much it scarred him. He probably thought he was going to die anyway, so it didn't matter. But it did to her. 

He always mattered.

To her, to everyone she knows, to the whole city, to the whole universe. Like all of the other heroes. Including Caitlin and Cisco. But Barry is different. He suffers and he suffers. He never gets to enjoy being a hero. There is only pain for him. Always loss.

Like Oliver.

They get the news when they are getting ready to leave. Iris insists to come, to hold him close while his life slips away. He knows that she would never be able do that if he will die running, but he doesn't object. He lets her hope that they will have a last moment all to themselves.

Oliver's news shock them. He was one of the eternal ones. He always seemed invincible. To be fair, all of them did. But Oliver was in it for the long run, way before the others even came up with aliens or nazis. He shouldn't have died.

Neither should Barry.

They quickly come to the ship, with a robotic Snart announcing their arrival. It is after several hours of Oliver's death, but a lot of them still look shaken. Cisco make some jokes, so as Frost, and little colour turn back to everyone's faces.

Well, not  _ everyone _ to be exact.

Barry is not there. Iris finds him in a red coloured room, leaning against the wall. 

Before she enters, she sees Kara coming to check on him. She stops when she sees Iris.

"Oh hey. I was just-" she gestures at the door, trying to smile. Iris smiles back knowingly. Kara knows best about the relationship between Oliver and Barry, so she probably put aside what she feels to help him get through first. They are pretty similar with Barry, so Iris can't help but feel the same warm feeling that she had towards Barry as her best friend for Kara. As a plus, she how to report a story so, Iris doesn't feel weird hugging her.

"Thank you," she says only to Kara.

"Iris, Oliver said that he-" she stutters, "he gave it all up for us, for me and Barry." Her eyes stare blankly for a second. "I thought you should know."

Iris throws her a final nod before bringing her attention back to her husband.

He is shaking, with his head tucked between his knees hugged by his long arms. There is a very familiar scene that comes to her mind, Henry's death. How they found him like that, next to his fathers dead body, soaked in his blood.  _ Suit hides the blood _ , she remembers.

Suit hides the blood.

She doesn't know what to say. She always does in these situations, but she was never familiar to Oliver and Barry's friendship. Their relationship was different, far more powerful than any other friendship descriptions. There was something about how they made each other family, putting each other in the empty spaces left by their dead parents. He was Barry's only hero, and Barry was his only hero. There was something about the forgiving love between them, understanding and supporting him even when Iris wasn't able to. He was his family as much as they were, so his death was devastating to him as much as theirs was.

"Hey honey." She whispers to let him know before touching him. 

He lifts his head and Iris notices that he wasn't crying. He was shaking because of all that frustration, that helplessness. There is a familiar sentence between his pain filled eyes.

_ It should have been me. _

"I'm here," she says, because it is the only consolation that she can give at the moment. "I'm with you."

But Barry doesn't break or start crying again against her comforting shoulder. He just stares blankly to the floor for a while, trying to stop his shaking with trembling deep breaths. Iris wants to hug him, to help him get it out but he doesn't look for it this time. He just gets up. Iris stands with him. He is still in his suit, trembling ever slightly.

First she thinks that this is just like the time that Ralph got killed. How he did not let himself feel and got angry, ambitious. She was worried when he came in Joe's arms that night when he finally broke, trying to feel that familiar comfort that Joe gave him after his mothers murder. She remembers how there was a strength in his grief, how it made him cry with pain but lifted him up with the new need for revenge too.

This doesn't feel like that. She can still see the determination in his eyes, but it's also filled with something else. With hopelessness. He has lost his hope.

Barry Allen never lost hope.

He takes out his gloves to hold her hand. Gloves still have blood on them. She tightly squeezes it, letting him know that she is always there even when he isn't able to stand by himself.

"I'm glad you are here," is all he says in return, confirming that he heard her before. They went through so much of these losses, this pain, this grief. It is exhausting. He is exhausted. She is exhausted too, seeing every loss darkening her husband's once bright green eyes. 

She hears a flash, and Barry's back with normal clothes. She understands why he doesn't let her hold him in the first place, he doesn't want to get her dirty. All that blood, all that horrible things he saw along the years, he doesn't want to rub that dirt on her. He hugs her when he comes back, now clear of his mentor's blood.

"I'm glad you are here." He repeats, slowly closing his eyes with the only good scent that he smells all day, the scent of home.


	2. With Every Cell In My Body

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 2, Barry dealing with Oliver's death right after the birth of the new world. Iris is tgere for him, as always. Super angsty.

"So, the whole multiverse has been destroyed." Frost elaborated.

"And you have been stuck in a weird room for months." Cisco said, pointing to Barry and Kara, who are fully suited and standing with both arms on their hips.

"Not Barry, he just ran to the speed force all that time." Kara corrected, slowly eyeing him to check if he's still okay. The fight was over, but even though they were in a whole new world, their other world's (and to be honest, the whole multiverse's) burdens were carried out with them. She still could see his legs slightly shaking when he stood still, but she didn't comment on it. He ran for months and then came to take them all into the speedforce. They took this energy that feeds off of him, that connects with every single of his cells; to recreate the world. Not mentioning even all that fighting they had to do. He was overly exhausted, maybe even more than she was.

"And you guys got into the speedforce to rebuild this earth," continued Ralph, not letting Caitlin get out of Frost to assess Barry's condition.

"In doing so, you managed to crash all the other earths into this one, to earth prime." Cisco explained again.

"And Oliver sacrificed himself for it, for us."

Barry's voice was a lot lower than all of the others, but it was heard loud and clear. He had anger in his voice, implying that they were wasting time with useless information when the only information that mattered was Oliver. His death. His goodbye. His sacrifice.

His sacrifice _for him_.

How can a person trade a life? How can someone decide that their life is not as valuable as someone else's, since they have never lived it? Oliver did. He always saw himself as the man he was, something that Barry was never able to. He saw his weaknesses, but his strengths too. He understood every choice that he made, right or wrong, and lived with them. He was never at peace but never at war either. He was important. Just as important as every single other person in this room. How could he choose to end it? How is that even _a choice_? No one understood it, not fully. No one except Barry.

He was ready to do that too. He was ready to trade his life with everyone else's. That's strength, resilience, Joe always ensured; but Oliver didn't. He said living needed more strength, not giving up needed more resilience. Being alive needed more energy.

And he definitely felt that.

He felt it with every speed step coursing through his body, with every breath that never seemed to bring enough air, with every inch of the leather that covered his body filled with dirt. Filled with blood. Filled with a broken body. A broken mind, _a broken hero._

It was supposed to get easier, grief was supposed to become easier. It never did. Especially not with friends and family. And especially not with the ones that were both. Oliver's passing didn't make him grieve, it made him hollow inside. Like Iris's death makes him feel. Like something from him is taken, something that made him who he was, and it would never come back.

"I'm really sorry that you had to witness that, Barry." Wow, when was Caitlin back? He must have missed more time than he thought in his mind. She puts a hand on his shoulder. He doesn't feel it, because it doesn't hurt him. He only feels pain now. It has been like that for a while. Since his presumed death.

_The dead only feel the pain._

"I called Iris by the way. The monitor showed her too, like we asked. She's probably on her way." Cisco tries to explain, but his voice comes from a different frequency to Barry's ears. It feels like the time Hartley made him internally bleed with sound, only not that physical.

He nods, he thinks (he's not sure) and says goodbye to Kara. He puts on a smile mirroring hers when he says "Good luck keeping up with this world's speed." She laughs, genuinely, and says she will try.

Caitlin still stands near him as Kara leaves S.T.A.R. His brain is just as exhausted as he is, so it takes a while for him to understand why. She wants to check on him. _"Do I look that bad?"_ he internally thinks, but doesn't say it out loud since he already knows the answer. His body begs for it to slow down, now that there is no danger that he has to run towards, but he still feels the uneasiness. He still feels like they should keep fighting, because he doesn't believe it was a win. Losing Oliver _couldn't_ be a win, even if it saved the world.

Caitlin helps him to medbay. She orders him to, but he refuses to, lay down. She checks him quickly, not even letting him know before taking a blood sample. Barry doesn't flinch, he is used to it by now. He says whatever she wants silently, which is so not him, but Caitlin doesn't elaborate on it. She saw him so similar to this, after Henry's death when he was carried into the house in Joe's arms unconscious from a psychological breakdown, or during their check to make sure there wasn't any negative speed force in his system after Nora's passing. He was defeated, dark. It was everything that they hoped didn't last with him, but every big scar left a mark. And his scars were too much for a human body to carry.

He refuses her IV too. He is severely dehydrated and needs a serious rest, but he doesn't listen to her when she tells him to just stay still for a while.

Then Iris arrives.

She has a familiar rush to her that Caitlin has seen thousands of times before. It is filled with worry for her husband and a small relief of him still being alive. She hangs up the phone after saying "Thanks for letting me know, Kara."

Of course, she asked for specific things that she knew Barry would never talk about for the only reason of not burdening or saddening her. But she was a journalist, she should know every aspect of a story. And she was a wife first, needing to know what happened to the love of her life in order to help him.

"Hi!" Iris says to Caitlin, a little out of breath.

"Hey. Lot to take in, huh?" She thanks Frost in her mind for taking control just a second to avoid an awkward situation.

"Yeah. I should see him."

"He's in the lounge. I wanted him to rest, but he refused. " 

"Kara said that he was running for a long time?"

"For months, she said."

"Months?!" Iris didn't even listen to what Caitlin said to her as assurance, because of the sound of her running heels meeting with the floor. This was bad, very bad, and she knew he needed her.

_He needed her so badly._

"Barry?"

He is standing next to the bar, with his fists pushed into the counter. He can't carry his weight anymore. But he refuses to sit on the cushions, it is his way of pushing himself even in the worst moments. Sitting down would mean that everything has ended and he can relax. 

Nothing ended.

His legs were still twitching with the need of running. He needed to run. _He needed to access to the speed force, with Oliver, because he wasn't dead, because he was alive as someone else, and he trusted him with every cell in his body, and the world's needed them, everyone that vanished needed them, he needed to run-_

"Woah, woah, honey." And hands holding him up is the only thing he can grasp for a moment. He lets her guide him to her touch, and almost falls between her hands. He sits on the floor, with his back on the bar, not resisting this time, because he really wasn't aware and because it was Iris that made him, so it was safe. She kneels next to him.

He probably lost his balance, but his mind is too foggy to remember. He still feels himself burning, heat clogging his vision. The suit sticks onto his skin, making it even harder to breathe. Oh god, he is so tired, and broken-

"I know Barr," an angel says, cupping his burning face on one of her hands. He must have said the last sentence out loud, because the next thing he feels is her soft thumb catching a tear.

"I'm so tired," he repeats, because one time is not enough to describe what he is feeling. He was drained, with a life that shouldn't be his own, with a choice that wasn't available to him. Everyone chose to die for him, Oliver did, ~~Barry Allen from Earth-90~~ Dad did, Nora did, his parents did, Eddie did, Iris-

Iris.

"Hey, it's okay. I'm so sorry honey, I know how important he was to you. He was family. I'm so sorry." She is mumbling to him non-stop, like she used to do when they were younger and he had panic attacks after a violent dream. The continuous reassurances calmed him back then, grounded him. Her little touch was enough generally to make him snap out of his horrible memories, but not now.

He sighs and buries his head in her. He loses the control of his body when sobs emerge, but her hands are steady for both of them.

He cries his heart out.

He is so tired of being strong, for feeling like he should not grieve this badly since Felicity and Sara's griefs are much more valid. But their shoulders are free of his life's burden; he didn't sacrifice himself for them. He did it for him.

"I don't want to do this anymore," he barely manages to blurt out between his sobs, but Iris hears it. "I've lost so much."

Iris can't help the tears that escape from her eyes as she holds him. He doesn't deserve any of this. He doesn't deserve this pain, this guilt, this brokenness.

She still remembers the talk they did with Nora after they went back to the past to beat Cicada. Nora learned about her grandmother and grandfather's deaths, also about Ronnie and Eddie. After they came back, Barry left to deal with his own thoughts while Iris quickly inquired Nora.

"I blamed him for not being there." Nora said, "You and I both blamed him for not being in our lives. But I can't grasp the heartache he had to go through in order to keep being a hero." And giving up on family, the only thing that he was running towards, trying to protect, is taken from him. Time and time again. It's a game that he's so destined to lose, but he keeps trying until his body gives out. "Your father has always been resilient, sometimes we just have to give up everything that we love for love." Papa Joe said to her and her mother. " _Barry was a bright man with a shattered heart."_

The Flash wasn't like that. It was pure energy, non-stop flow of power. It didn't break, it didn't get tired. So the Flash was the hero. Barry Allen wasn't.

He was the one left to pick up the pieces.

"And I keep losing." Barry picks up again, this time in a breathless voice. Iris quickly realizes it and stops her mumbling to hold his head on her level.

"With me babe, breathe." He mirrors her deep breathing. It seems to make him more disoriented though, probably because his body had barely any energy.

"Let's go home," she says after several minutes, finally thinking that he's better. He agrees, and flashes them to their loft. 

Iris catches him before he collapses to the sofa, trying so hard not to be angry at him for not letting her drive them. She texts Joe to take her car to the house, and lays next to her now almost unconscious husband. Her worried gaze alters between his shut eyes with black bags and his rising chest. She slowly reaches to the suit to take it off, and manages it without waking him up.

All the bruises and blood makes her wince at the sight, even though she knows they will be all gone tomorrow. They still leave a mark. They always leave a mark.

Managing to get him into some sweats and leaving his upper body naked, (since he really doesn't want anything rubbing against his injuries) she lets his body fall onto her knees. She opens up a musical on TV, one of his favorites, and holds him. She holds him like she can take away all those bruises, like she can heal all his injuries, like she can fill all that he's lost, like the broken little boy that she used to hold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for coming to this journey with me! Please let me know what you think! You can also suggest new ideas, I'm always open to those too.


End file.
